Subset Games Forum

Wouldn't it be a great challenge for more skilled players, if this simple check was added to the AI: is it possible to damage the player ship? If the AI ship has just charged its Burst Laser II, but the player has 3 or more shield points, there's no point in firing the weapon at that moment. I can't imagine this being very hard to implement. Of course it might just be insanely hard and pointless. Do you think it would be a good idea?

I would be happy if the AI would time its beams better. Now the AI just shoots whenever he has a weapon up, while he should fire all his weapons at the same time.

This game would be so much harder if ai shot in vollys and targeted specific systems. Would be a nice option though since its a bit silly now.

That sounds like a good idea, but you might have to put that into a seperate difficulty, because if it was in easy and normal new players would find it very hard to get anywhere.

Also, how would it apply to ships that can't get through your shields, like one with 2 beam weapons?
Would they just sit there not firing anything because they can't damage u?
(I really like those kind of ships )

StarWarsOZ wrote:That sounds like a good idea, but you might have to put that into a seperate difficulty, because if it was in easy and normal new players would find it very hard to get anywhere.

Also, how would it apply to ships that can't get through your shields, like one with 2 beam weapons?
Would they just sit there not firing anything because they can't damage u?
(I really like those kind of ships )

They'd try to run naturally. Why should they just sit there firing, letting your crew learn how to perform better?

It'd change the game a lot though, so a new difficulty or a total rebalancing altogether would be needed.

Pixel wrote:

StarWarsOZ wrote:That sounds like a good idea, but you might have to put that into a seperate difficulty, because if it was in easy and normal new players would find it very hard to get anywhere.

Also, how would it apply to ships that can't get through your shields, like one with 2 beam weapons?
Would they just sit there not firing anything because they can't damage u?
(I really like those kind of ships )

They'd try to run naturally. Why should they just sit there firing, letting your crew learn how to perform better?

It'd change the game a lot though, so a new difficulty or a total rebalancing altogether would be needed.

Yeah, that would work if they just tried to run, but as we both said, it will need big changes to the game and playstyle, so that probably won't be done until a FTL 2 (if one even comes out)

For now I am happy dealing with ships that have very OP weapons that can't take out all my systems in one shot, thanks.

It would also be nice if the computer knew how to use the anti-bio beam! Right now if you give it to an enemy ship it just shoots wildly.

Of course a total rebalancing of existing difficulty levels would be too much to ask from a mere patch. What I'm suggesting is a new difficulty level with just small changes. Things that take very little time to implement, but make the game possibly a lot harder. I'm aware that most games do this by just increasing AI bonuses, but we can hope that FTL does better. At least the difficulty level naming has obvious room for one more level

A Hard difficulty where the only change would be smarter AI would be pretty interesting. Although it is kind of funny seeing the AI drop EMP bombs into empty sections of my ship. Pro tactics.

If the AI knew how to time its shots then it would make shield recharge speed pretty useless.